A time slip is an occurrence in which people inadvertently step from their time into another time: either the past or the future. Imagine the possibility of witnessing the construction of the pyramids by slaves toiling under the scorching sun in the Valley of the Kings on the bank of the Nile in Egypt, or, going further back in time, entering a primordial fern forest where dinosaurs stalk, or, moving forward in time, being in the year 4000 in which interstellar travels have become possible. Experts on the paranormal have studied this phenomenon and based their conclusion on the scientific theory that time is not linear, but rather occurs like water in a lake: rippling around the same point in space. It seems that \u201cclock-time\u201d alone is not sufficient to explain these time slips. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I<\/strong>n 1979 Geoff and Pauline Simpson and Len and Cynthia Gisby, two married couples, went to Spain on vacation. While they were driving through France bound for Spain, they stayed overnight at a hotel. Both couples observed that the hotel was extremely outdated, as the bedroom had no window panes, only shutters. Nor did it have pillows or sheets, only calico fabric. Even the hotel bill they paid seemed too less for the time. When the vacationists had their photos developed, the pictures of the hotel were completely missing from the roll. The couple later returned to the same hotel to spend a holiday, but they could not find it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An old man from Norfolk, England (let us call him \u2018Mr. Squirrel\u2019 for the sake of convenience), had a hobby of collecting coins and keeping them in plastic envelopes. In 1973 he went to a shop in Great Yarmouth, a seaside resort town, to buy these envelopes. This was his first visit to the shop. On entering the shop, he found the atmosphere quite quaint. A woman in Edwardian dress served the customer who bought a bunch of envelopes and came out. When after a week Mr. Squirrel went there again to buy some more envelopes, he was shocked to notice that the place had completely changed. Still having envelopes in hand, he inquired about the woman at the counter, but the staff knew no such woman who worked there. Mr. Squirrel was disconcerted when he was told that those envelopes were never sold at the shop. Then he checked the date of manufacture of the envelopes and came to know that they were manufactured before World War I (1914-1918) and hence they were antique pieces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aviators in World War I reported that while circling airports in England, they were utterly amazed to see huge, gleaming metal aircraft of today, totally different from the primitive airplanes of their time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unique case of the two English tourists<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The classic and much publicised case is the experience which two English unmarried ladies underwent on a visit to the Petit Trianon in Versailles in Paris in 1901. They were Anne Moberly (1846-1937) and Eleanor Jourdain (1863-1924). Moberly, daughter of Bishop of Salisbury, lived in a cultured, donnish society and was appointed Principal of St. Hugh\u2019s. Jourdain, daughter of a Derbyshire vicar, held a doctorate from the University of Paris, specialising in French literature. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While visiting the place on 10^{th<\/sup> August 1901, they passed some farm buildings which Jourdain described as \u201cdeserted\u201d. She noticed agricultural tools, among which was a plough lying about and found that the place gave a \u201csaddening\u201d impression. At a window Moberly saw a woman shaking a white cloth, but Jourdain did not see her. When they walked forward, a queer feeling of depression and unreality began to envelop them. Next they met two men in greenish uniforms with three-cornered hats, obviously gardeners, working with a wheel-barrow. Jourdain saw a cottage in the doorway of which a girl and a woman were standing and the woman was handing a jug to the girl. Their unusual mode of attire, quite different from the style of the early 1900\u2019s, caught the attention of Jourdain: both wore white kerchiefs tucked into the bodice. Then both ladies saw a man, with a dark complexion, marked by smallpox, sitting in a garden kiosk, wearing a heavy black cloak and a slouch hat. His evil expression and repulsive appearance, according to the ladies, filled them with fear and unease. The man turned to look at them, but his eyes were somehow unseeing. He looked through them. This tableau of a past event in the 1700\u2019s, according to the ladies, had an eerie, lifeless and other-worldly appearance- \u201clike a wood worked in tapestry\u201d, as Moberly put it. \u201cThere were no effects of light and shade and no wind stirred the trees\u201d, she said. Later they encountered a dark-eyed, handsome man with crisp, curling black hair beneath a large sombrero hat. Though they heard him running up towards them, he appeared unaccountably beside them. He uttered a few words excitedly in French and ran on. They had no idea of where the man went, although they could still hear the sound of his running. Suddenly he was just not there. Moberly and Jourdain walked over a small rustic bridge which crossed a little ravine. A cascade fell down a green bank with ferns and stones. Beyond the bridge a small country house stood in the distance. On the terrace in front of the house Moberly saw a lady with a pretty face, sitting sketching. This lady, who was not young, looked up as they passed by. But, strangely, Jourdain did not see her.  When they visited the same place again, the scenery had changed and they could not find any trace of what they had seen before. The two ladies later co-authored a book in 1911, entitled An Adventure, <\/em>to recount their uncanny experience. Their intensive research to solve the mystery led them to conclude that the repulsive-looking man at the kiosk was Comte de Vaudreuil (1740-1817), a Creole from a French colony in the West Indies and one of Queen Marie-Antoinette\u2019s friends who was responsible for her downfall. The running man was a messenger who had come to warn the queen of the approaching mobs from Paris, due in an hour. The girl seen in the cottage doorway was the gardener\u2019s daughter Marion. The pretty lady was none other than the queen who was guillotined in 1793 during the French Revolution. Moberly, on seeing in 1902 a portrait of the queen by the Swedish painter Adolf Urik Wertm\u00fcller (1751-1811), was struck by its resemblance to the lady on the terrace. Moberly and Jourdain theorised that as Queen Marie-Antoinette was going through mental agony in the Hall of Assembly on 10th<\/sup> August 1792, she cast her mind back to her last day at the Petit Trianon on 05th<\/sup> October 1789. The English pedagogues surmised that they had inadvertently entered into the act of the queen\u2019s memory when alive, exactly 109 years later, on 10th<\/sup> August 1901, thus accounting for the weird feeling of depression that gripped them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n}

In the incidents narrated above, persons have unwillingly or randomly leapt into the past or future and journeyed back to the present after some time. Such incidents are termed \u201ctime slips\u201d, \u201ctime travels\u201d or \u201ctime reverberation\u201d. As these spontaneous occurrences, that are not commonplace, cannot be explained conclusively by modern physics, they are often rejected as complete bunk; classified as hauntings or visiting ghosts, hallucinations, delusions and even cases of reincarnation. But, when one studies the case of Mr. Squirrel who \u2018returned\u2019 from the past with tangible or physical evidence, namely the envelopes he had bought, such explanations seem to be no longer tenable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The author Andrew Tomas in his thought-provoking book Beyond the Time Barrier<\/em>, touching on the Petit Trianon mystery, says that on 10^{th<\/sup> August 1901 electric storms swept over Europe and the static in the atmosphere could have amplified the temporal field. He notes that certain peculiarities of the phenomenon have the distinguishing marks of a radio or television programme: fading of sounds, melting of images, wavering of scenes, etc. Pointing out the episode of the woman handing a jug to the girl, the author says that there was a pause in the action as if a motion picture stopped and became a \u201cstill\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n}

Robert Charroux (1909-1978), the prolific French author on ancient astronauts and civilisations, in his book Le Livre des Mondes Oubli\u00e9s, <\/em>writes about a similar event: a bizarre vision that unfolded itself in Hiroshima a few months after the dropping of the atomic bomb on the city on 06^{th<\/sup> August 1945. According to an authentic witness who was a diplomat and who later died of radiation, on certain evenings, at twilight, images of the destroyed bridges appeared above the river, with cars, pedestrians, and the usual liveliness of the city. It looked like a projection of a film that had been made prior to the atomic explosion. The witness said that the phenomenon occurred only under certain atmospheric conditions, but no one could predict it. The embassy staff thought that they had gone mad owing to the radiation they had been exposed to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n}